I’ve brought another Mac laptop to use for the Ustream, so we’ll see how this goes. The quality should be better than what I’ve achieved recently using Ustream Mobile. If you attend (virtually or face-to-face) and are willing to serve as a moderator, make sure you’re logged in with a Ustream account and let me know in the chat, and I’ll “knight you” with moderation powers over the chat. I’ve only run into problems once or twice needing moderation in a live Ustream broadcast, but that was enough to encourage me to use this feature. See UStream FAQ #3 “How Do I Moderate My Chat” for more info on Ustream moderation options as well as commands.

Good teaching is similar in many ways to good cooking. Recipes are helpful, but master cooks often modify those to meet different needs and situations. The same is true for teachers. If we extend this analogy of cooking to teaching and learning in a web 2.0 world, what are the best “ingredients” to use as we help both teachers and students learn to be more effective, safe, and powerful communicators in our flat world? In this working session we will focus on six key ingredients: del.icio.us, social bookmarks, Flickr photo sharing, VoiceThread digital storytelling, collaborative writing tools, websites for phone recording as well as SMS polling, and videoconferencing. Cooking can be intimidating for novices, but richly rewarding. Bring your own laptop and join Wesley Fryer as you learn how to cook up some gourmet learning with some powerful (and free) web 2.0 tools!

On the subject of bandwidth and content management… Our district provides pretty open access to our teachers and students. We allow Skype, YouTube, Google docs, and many other Web2.0 sites. Additionally, we allow teachers to bypass most site blocks using their user credentials. Our new problem is a lack of bandwidth. We max out our 12Mbps pipe constantly.

We are in the process of dividing the networks so that we can manage the use in different ways. This takes time and expertise. Seems to me that some of the “management” needs to happen on the human level. Just as teachers supervise playgrounds, they should be supervising computer use. I’m afraid that our teachers don’t take this seriously. They are either afraid, misinformed or lazy.

Barb in Nebraska

Thanks for inviting everyone to the workshop. I learned a lot and made new friends. What more could you ask for in a workshop?!

Thanks for joining in, Barb! It was great to have you as a virtual participant.

David: I agree segmenting networks is a good idea. I think K-12 networks need to start looking more like university networks in this regard. By segmenting with VLANs, for instance, public wifi can be provided that is separated from the computers used for administrative purposes. This can address malware propagation issues as well as bandwidth allocation.